I’m looking at the requirements for the first scenario. The table represents a settlement—it requires six buildings and some pens or an orchard. On top of that, I need six Giant Rat models and at least eight Zombie models. All right, I think. I’ve been into miniature gaming since 1994. This can be done.

I grab the Zombie miniatures from my copy of Zombicide and paint them quickly—one Saturday, and I have the complete set. Then I look into in the Rat models – I find some rats in one of the Zombicide expansions. I didn’t have the expansion, but I went to the company warehouse and dug around a bit. Perks of being the boss at a game company. The Rats were painted in about an hour, and after one diligently spent Saturday, I was ready with all the enemy models.

The terrain was a bit more work. On Sunday, I built and painted two huts. They turned out much worse than I had hoped, so I didn’t even try making a third one—too embarrassing. Instead, I bought a ready-made STL file and printed two more huts on Monday with a 3D printer. These looked like they had come straight from The Lord of the Rings movies. The next weekend, I painted them, and I was ready with the terrain.

Then my party, my Rangers! I had already bought the models, so all I had to do was paint them. They deserved more than a speedpaint job; after all, it’s Aragorn, Gimli, and Éowyn models, so I had to put in the effort. Seven models, two weekends of work, and they turned out amazing.

A month flew by, but I was finally ready. After four weekends of intense preparation, gluing, building, and painting, I could finally play. I grabbed the rulebook, set up the scenario, picked up the dice, and embarked on an epic defense of the settlement.

After 45 minutes, I won. I calculated the Experience Points and turned the page to the next scenario. This time, I need eight Giant Spiders and six cocoons from which they’ll emerge. The terrain setup represents a forest, so I also need about 20 trees…

***

Rangers of Shadow Deep is a narrative miniature game. Each battle is a separate scenario, with different terrain setups, different enemies, and a brand new part of the Shadow Deep story. Each battle means several weekends of preparing new terrain elements and enemy models. Each battle is then about an hour of gameplay.

It’s completely absurd. Return On Investment, Return of Game Time versus the Preparation Time really is beyond absurd.

I tell you a secret: I love it!

Let me explain.

***

When you play at a gaming club, where the shelves are packed with terrain built over the years, and club members have hordes of skeletons, zombies, spiders, rats, and whatever else you might need, Rangers of Shadow Deep is just another skirmish game. You open the scenario, grab the terrain from the shelves, borrow models from your friends, and defend the Shadow Deep from the Darkness.

But when you’re in this hobby alone, when you have to handle the extensive list of preparations, when you’re the one who is building the terrain and finding enemy models, only then does Rangers of Shadow Deep reveal its true secret. And what is that secret?

Rangers of Shadow Deep is an incredibly simple skirmish game, a game with rules that could be written in 10 minutes on a folded sheet of A4 paper—just roll a d20 and see if you rolled higher than the attacking Zombie. Let’s be frank, this game isn’t really about battles and dice rolling. Rangers of Shadow Deep is about the love of the hobby. It’s about the preparations for the game, about building terrain, finding and painting the right monster models, naming your party of Rangers, and assigning them skills that probably won’t even come into play. Rangers of Shadow Deep is a game about those weeks of preparation and the excitement for the upcoming session.

And the gameplay itself? It doesn’t quite compare to the main fun: roll a few d20s, defeat some Zombies, and in an hour, you can return to what’s best—the preparations. First, allocate Experience Points for your Rangers, then plan new terrain, then paint new enemy models. More weekends of fun ahead…

His troops enter my city. With one swift move, he cuts me off from resources and recruitment opportunities. I’m finished. For the next hour and a half, I’ll be dying of boredom trying to gather an army, but I know I’ve just lost my chance at victory.

“You could have met him head-on, sent out a patrol, and stopped his march a province earlier. He wouldn’t have gotten into your city,” says Michał.

“Is that possible? Can you stop him during his turn?” I ask, surprised.

“Well, yeah, before any enemy troop movement, you have the right to launch a counter-attack and strike the marching column.”

“I didn’t know that,” I reply, both furious and embarrassed.

Furious, because I lost this game, I gave up my capital only because I didn’t know one rule. I could have stopped him on the way to the city, then reinforced it, brought in the rest of my troops – the whole situation would have looked completely different, and I would still be in the running for victory.

Embarrassed, because whose fault is it? Well, mine. I wasn’t focused on listening to the rules, I forgot about that rule, I’m the fool who’s losing not because I made poor tactical decisions, but because I’m an idiot who doesn’t know the game rules.

***

Nothing frustrates me more in games than a situation like this. A situation where a fool like me takes away the satisfaction of victory from an opponent, where I make such a basic mistake that the victory loses its flavor. The whole game shifts from “You really played well, congratulations!” to “If I had known that rule, you wouldn’t have won.” bullshit.

And there are two more guys at the table, disappointedly watching me as I wrecked the whole game, as I let the opponent seize my capital effortlessly, and now, with a cruel smile, he turns toward them. I’ve thrown off the balance of the whole game. I’ve ruined the game for all four of us.

I, the fool who sits down to play without knowing all the rules. The fool whose ignorance didn’t just spoil the fun for himself, but for everyone at the table.

So today, a plea – don’t be a fool. Grit your teeth, clench your fists, and when someone explains the rules, listen.

For thirty years, I’d been complaining about players, just like every Game Master. At every opportunity, be it a convention or a reunion, we would eventually end up whining about how terrible and ungrateful our players were. We tried our best, sweated blood for them, were ready to do everything for them, and paid attention to every little detail. And they would still just show up at the session, stuff themselves with crisps, collect PD, and go home, without even as much as “thank you,” “you’re the best,” or at least cleaning those damn potato crisps after themselves.

I mean, preparing such a session takes dozens of hours. It’s like a full-time job. And afterward, you don’t even get a “thank you”.

In the games I design, players have dozens of decisions to make. In the famous „51st State,” each card can be played in three ways. In „Robinson,” each action can be performed in two ways—safely or with risk. Even in my story-driven „Detective,” I crammed in as many choices as possible—there are 36 cards in the deck, but players will only read 18 of them. Which ones? That’s their choice.

I like choices in games. I like making decisions and, most importantly, I love that moment after the game ends when I look at my score and tell myself, „At that moment, I made the wrong decision. If I played again, I would play differently.”

This week, I played a game during which I hardly made any decisions.

I have always been interested in war games. Unfortunately, I didn’t play them much, as I was navigating through the realms of RPGs, miniature games, and, of course, modern board games. There wasn’t enough time for war games. Additionally, I didn’t have fellow wargamers.

So, every six months or so, I would treat myself to one game. Classics like Commands & Colors: Ancients or Manoeuvre found their way into my collection, and I was playing them maybe twice a year. I somehow justified it, telling myself that it made sense, that if the Annual Playthrough Coefficient was at a solid two, it was worth it.